Peking Man's Skull, Himalayan Yeti's Hand: Searching for a Chinese Missing Link
- Mar 10
- 2 min read
Dihao Zhou,
Society of Fellows ('28), HKU
Date: 23 March 2026 (Mon)
Time: 5 PM (HKT)
Venue: Room 4.30 (Faculty Lounge), 4/F,
Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
All are welcome!
No registration required.
“Missing link” refers to intermediate species thought to connect apes and humans in the evolutionary lineage. This talk centers on two Chinese candidates for the missing link in the twentieth century and their theatrical incarnations, aiming to disentangle the layered discourses and imaginaries underlying the hypothetical concept and ultimately the definition of humanity. Peking Man, whose fossils were unearthed in the 1920s, inspired dramatist Cao Yu’s play Peking Man (1941). Nearly half a century later, the “wild man” (a Chinese counterpart of Bigfoot/Yeti) reportedly sighted in the forests of Hubei was rendered by Gao Xingjian in his avant‑garde drama Wild Man (1985). This talk situates the configurations of and controversies around these missing link candidates within the contested field of human evolution and paleoanthropology since the late nineteenth century, highlighting three key issues—a nationalist overturning of China’s racial inferiority, a Marxist/communist conception of human ancestrality, and a dialectical-ecological rethinking of the former two formulations.
Dihao Zhou joined the University of Hong Kong in 2025 as a Research Assistant Professor in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, affiliated with the School of Chinese. His research examines speculative arts and thoughts concerning science and the environment in modern China. He earned his Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Yale University and previously taught at Sichuan University. His publications appears in such journals as Science Fiction Studies, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Wenxue, among others.
Peking Man's Skull, Himalayan Yeti's Hand: Searching for a Chinese Missing Link
Society of Fellows in the Humanities
School of Chinese
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